“Whoa,” he muttered as he rolled away from her.
She turned on her side, surprisingly disappointed that he had stopped. “What?”
“Increased sensation,” he explained. His eyes were dilated and his breath came in pants. “Intense. But I—I’m not sure we should do this.”
Natalie pursed her lips. Good old scars struck again. Great.
“I understand.” She pushed up off the bed and turned her back. “Can you get to your room okay, or do you need help?”
Alec got up and touched her arm, making her face him. “I don’t think you do understand, Natalie. I’m not pushing you away because I don’t want to do this.”
“Aren’t you? I mean, I know you haven’t pushed away hundreds of other girls,” Natalie said, more snappy than she wanted to be. Her tone made her obvious and vulnerable.
Alec shut his eyes. “Hundreds may be exaggerating it just a touch. But that doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me,” Natalie said, “. . . for some stupid reason.”
He looked at her, his gaze focused and intense. “Natalie, right now I’m just on the edge of moon-crazed. Whatever I do, whatever I feel, it’s going to be all confused with what’s happening inside of me. If I did this with you, it would be awesome, but I would also have very little control over it. And my memories later would even be dim at best. And when we do this . . . I’d really like to remember every minute. And also not be covered in bruises that hurt like a motherfucker.”
He tilted his head and forced her to meet his eyes. “Do you get that?”
Natalie pursed her lips. Shit, why did he have to pick now to be all rational?
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Can I have a postponement?” he asked.
She wanted to say no, to make him feel like he’d lost his one shot, but she didn’t want to lose hers.
“We’ll just have to see what happens,” was the best she could muster.
He grinned. “I’ll take that. And this.”
Then he leaned forward and kissed her again. And Natalie knew, as all that fire in her body lit up again, that next time he tried putting her on her back on the bed, she wasn’t going to say no. And she wouldn’t let him go.
She just hoped it would happen soon.
14
Natalie wasn’t holding hands with Alec as they got off the elevator at Jekyll and Hyde’s apartment the that evening, but as they walked up the hallway, she felt him watching her. Actually, staring a hole through her skull was the more accurate description. The boy was nothing if not intense.
Thankfully, her head was way clearer than it had been when she got home.
Making out was fun and all, but she wasn’t about to go thinking there was something else to it. The guy wasn’t just a wolf, he was a dog when it came to women. She was a novelty, nothing else. There wasn’t going to be a future there. And if she wanted to keep him as a roommate, it was probably best to let it stay that way.
As they got closer to the door, Natalie slowed down. Their dwindling group of monster friends was gathered around the door. Linda, Drake, and Kai took turns knocking.
“What’s up with this?” Alec muttered as they reached the group.
Kai turned toward them with a frown. “Jekyll and Hyde refuse to let us in.”
Linda also turned, and when she saw Alec’s bruised face, she flinched. “Oh no. Were you attacked?”
Alec opened his mouth, but Linda didn’t allow him to speak. “Did they try to kill you?”
“Linda—” he began again.
She covered her face and sobbed, “Oh God, am I next?”
Alec reached out and patted her arm. “Dude, chill. It wasn’t Trench Coat.” He tossed a quick glance at Kai, who looked away. “I just bothered the wrong guy.”
Natalie pursed her lips. She had no idea why Alec was so keen on protecting Kai’s boyfriend. He had told her before that nothing had ever happened between him and Kai, but maybe he’d lied. Not that it was any of her business. She was more interested in what was going on with Jekyll and Hyde.
“Do we even know if they’re in there?” Natalie asked.
Alec turned to her. “You’ve got super-ears, why don’t you check it out?”
Natalie shrugged. She could do that, yes. She just hadn’t thought of it first. She leaned her ear against the door.
Sure enough, she heard shuffling and Hyde’s angry voice muttering, though she couldn’t make out exactly what he was saying.
“I only hear Hyde,” she said, shutting her eyes so she could concentrate on what was happening behind the door. “No Jekyll.”
“Maybe he’s in Hyde’s head,” Kai suggested in a low whisper.
Natalie glanced at the Mummy Girl. “Good point. One way or another, though, he sounds pretty drunk.”
Natalie frowned as she pulled back from the door and the sounds became more muffled. She had never seen Hyde impaired before. Sober he was bad enough.
Alec nodded. “I agree. Dog ears meet . . .”
She laughed despite herself. “Convict ears, I guess.”
“Okay, lovebirds, enough.” Kai sighed. “So what do we do?”
Alec dug around in his pocket and pulled out a long piece of wire. With a grin, he moved to the door.
“What is that?” Linda asked.
“Lock pick,” he explained to the group. “Can you give me some room?”
In stunned silence, everyone took a long step back. Alec made a noise of pain as he crouched down and started fiddling with the lock. He took a few minutes and then there was an audible click and he turned the knob and the door opened.
Natalie reached forward to help him to his feet and everyone stared into the apartment. The curtains were drawn and the lights were off, so the space was almost completely dark beyond the sliver of light now coming in from the hallway behind them.
Natalie swatted at the light switch next to the door and finally a lamp across the room clicked on to reveal the room in full.
It had been utterly wrecked. Furniture was flipped over and torn, bottles were broken against the walls, leaving waterfalls of booze dripping down the custom paint. Paintings were torn and hanging crooked on the wall.
“Holy shit,” Kai breathed as she took the first step into the room. “What the hell happened here?”
“What happened?”
From the darkest corner of the room, Hyde rose from a crouching position where no one had seen him and staggered toward them. An empty bottle dangled from his fingertips and there was a wild look in his eyes. Natalie actually took a step back.
Hyde had always had an animal quality to him. Not like Alec, with his wolfish charm, but menacing . . . on the edge of control . . . ready to attack. But she’d never seen him so wild before. He was already red, his body bigger, his nails talons, which explained the jagged rips in the expensive wallpaper.
“I’ll tell you what happened,” he continued before he spun and threw the bottle against the wall with all his might. It shattered and Natalie turned her face away from the spray of glass and liquor. “Jekyll is dead.”
Natalie lifted her hand to her lips to cover her gasp. Jekyll . . .
She stared at Hyde, all rage and monstrous insanity, and suddenly a terrible thought dawned on her. “Hyde . . . did—did you—?”
Hyde spun on her, his dark eyes sparkling with pain and disbelief as he took in the meaning of her truncated sentence. “No! Never. I would never kill my brother . . . my best friend.”
“Then what happened?” Kai whispered.
Hyde’s face crumpled. “He was poisoned.”
Alec groaned. “Just like in his story.”
Hyde nodded. “He died a few hours ago. At a club. The police have already taken his body away.”
Natalie shut her eyes. Great. More problems for her to clean up once she got to work. Then she stared at Hyde with a wrinkled brow.
“But . . . how are you still here? You two can only be separated for an hour, right?”
Hyde nodded. “That’s true when we’re both alive. If both sides of the coin exist, we can only be separated a short time,” Hyde snarled. “But once he’s gone . . . then I get everything, apparently.”
Natalie blinked. “What—what does that mean, exactly?”
She really didn’t want to know, but there was no choice now. Everything had to be put on the table so they could protect themselves.
Hyde stared around him, looking at the carnage that had been hidden by the darkness until Natalie turned on the light.
“I—I did this,” he murmured, perhaps more to himself than to anyone else.
Natalie hesitated. His voice was so flat, she couldn’t tell if he was sad to see the damage to the apartment, or sorry that he’d lost control. “Yes,” she responded softly. “It appears so.”
He didn’t look at her. “And he couldn’t stop me,” he added. Hyde’s sorrow faded and he smiled. It was an ugly expression, menacing and so much more evil than usual.
“Jekyll’s connection to me was his mind, his memories, his life force. And his control over me. Now that it is gone, I can do anything I want.”
Natalie’s lips parted in horror and shock. Numerous times she had seen the calming effect Jekyll had had on Hyde. Their psychic connection, their monster abilities, they allowed Jekyll to keep his brother in check.
But now . . . now Hyde had no one to balance his wicked desires. To keep him from roaming the streets robbing, raping . . . and even worse. And she could imagine that Hyde would think of oh-so-much-worse if he had no one to put his desires in lockdown.
“Hyde,” Kai whispered. Her face was pale. There was no doubt she was having the same thoughts as Natalie was. “We know you’re upset, but—”
He snapped his gaze to her and tilted his head like an animal who had just noticed prey. “You are a beautiful woman, Kai. So perfect, like porcelain. So easy to break.”
Kai swallowed but, to her credit, didn’t step away from him. Natalie wasn’t sure she could have held her ground like that, monster strength or not.
“Hyde,” Alec snapped. Though he was still moving slowly because of his injuries, Natalie could see he was ready to attack, or be attacked. “You’ve got to think your actions through. Would Jekyll want you to go nuts?”
Hyde hesitated, but then he shrugged. “It doesn’t matter now, does it? Jekyll doesn’t want anything anymore.”
“Oh no,” Natalie whispered.
This was going to be bad. And added to their other problems? Even worse.
“These people . . . these humans, they have controlled us for too long,” Hyde said, his tone harsh and angry. “And now they kill us?”
“We don’t know who is killing us,” Kai insisted. “It might not be humans.”
“Oh, please. We know it’s humans,” Hyde scoffed. “It’s always been humans. They call us monsters and use that label to justify what they do. Well, they want a monster”—he shoved through the group in one bound—“they’ll get a fucking monster!”
“Wait!” Natalie cried.
She reached for him, trying to grab his coat, but he was already gone, sprinting at a fantastic speed down the hallway and disappearing into the stairwell.
The rest of the group stared after him, the silence heavy and filled with shock.
Linda was finally the one to break it. She motioned for the door wildly. “We—we should go after him. He could ruin everything for all of us if he goes off and shows his true monster face to the world. He might even do it on purpose, just out of spite or pride.”
“That’s probably true,” Kai said, her voice flat as she shook her head. “But I doubt anyone could catch him if he doesn’t want to be caught. Speed has always been part of their . . . his powers. Besides, he might be right.”
Natalie turned on her with a blink. “What could you possibly find in that insanity that is right?”
She shrugged. “Maybe monsters should be monsters and not pretend otherwise. Especially now that we’re being threatened.”
Drake smiled. “That is what I’ve been trying to tell all of you for days.”
Linda sniffled as the usual tears welled up in her green eyes. “Well, I don’t want to be a monster, so if that’s our big solution, then I’m going home.”
“What are you going to do at home?” Alec asked. “By yourself, with a killer on the loose?”
She shrugged as she pushed her cheap purse up higher on her shoulder. “I don’t know. But in that awful movie I was riddled with bullets and sank to the bottom of the swamp. So if I’m going to get shot a bunch of times and then drown in my bathtub or the East River or something, at least I’m going to be surrounded by my cats when it happens.”
There was a long pause and then Alec asked, “How many cats?”
Linda pursed her lips, then extended her middle finger toward him and pivoted on her heel out the door and toward the elevator.
Kai watched her go with a sad shake of her head.
“That girl refuses to acknowledge there are benefits to what we are,” she said softly. “What’s the point of living if you’re not going to live?”
“But she may be as correct as Hyde,” Drake said. “Not in her fear of what she is, but in her suggestion that we go home. For now, for tonight, there’s nothing we can do but hope Hyde doesn’t get himself arrested or killed by the police.”
“And what about the murderer?” Natalie asked. “Do we just forget about him?”
Kai pursed her lips. “Natalie, you asked Hyde if he had killed Jekyll himself. Do you think that might still be a possibility?”
Natalie jolted. “You mean that Hyde could have been the one behind this all along?”
Kai nodded.
Alec shrugged. “He is mad enough. And he hates us all both individually and on a group basis.”
“Those things may be true, but I don’t know,” Natalie said. “I’m the one who asked, but the fact is, up until last night, Hyde had Jekyll to control him.”
“But he’s broken loose of those chains before,” Drake said with a disdainful sniff. “We all remember the Central Park incident.”
Natalie flinched. She tried not to think of that night five years ago. Jekyll had been ill, and somehow Hyde used that fact to free himself of his brother’s control. He’d bolted into Central Park in a mad frenzy and nearly killed a homeless man. He’d called it self-defense, but no one in their group had believed him. He’d taken too much pleasure in retelling the act for it to be a mere act of preservation.
But the truth and the law were very different things. Hyde was lucky he had money, Jekyll to merge himself with, and a good attorney.
“Those were terrible times,” Natalie said with a shiver. “But it was an isolated incident. Jekyll never would have allowed him to kill one after the other of our group.”
Alec was the one to nod. “I tend to agree. Jekyll wasn’t good at lying. If he’d known the killer’s identity, he wouldn’t have been able to hide that fact from us when we talked about it in group. We would have seen it all over his honest face.”
“Plus, as much as Hyde resented Jekyll, he also loved him.” Natalie was surprised to find tears tingle in her eyes as she said, “You saw his face, he’s lost without his . . . brother.”
Alec considered that for a moment and then nodded. “I hate to say I feel sorry for the psychopath, but I kind of do. Still, if he goes on a three-state killing spree, we’re royally fucked . . . and I’d definitely feel less sorry for him.”
“But the killing spree we must worry about at present is the one targeting us,” Drake said with a shake of his head. “So we must return to topic. Our killer has never killed more than one of us in a day.”
Natalie shrugged. “That’s true. Ellis was almost a week ago and Blob was probably a day or two before that, based on autopsy results. It took whoever it is a long time to get around to going after Jekyll.”
Drake nodded and continued, “If we base our assumptions about what this
person will do in the future on his past habits, then I assume he will go home. Enjoy his handiwork. So perhaps we should follow Linda’s lead and do the same. We can try to regroup tomorrow when emotions aren’t so high.”
Kai shrugged. “If that’s what everyone wants, there’s no harm to it. I have a few things to do anyway.”
Without waiting to hear anyone else’s opinion, Drake poofed into a bat and flew toward the closest window. Kai waved her hand at him like he was a nasty fly she could shoo away, then shook her head and motioned Alec and Natalie toward the door.
“What will you two do tonight? Work, Natalie?”
She shook her head. “I have a night off. So maybe I’ll do some more research on the medallion we saw around that person’s neck. If he is a monster hunter, maybe there’s a reference in one of the old books or movies.”
Alec clapped his hands together. “Yes! Movie night!”
Natalie shook her head. “I don’t enjoy watching them, Wolfie.”
“Aw, come on. All the ones about me are pretty entertaining,” he teased.
“Well, have fun, kids,” Kai said as Natalie pressed the elevator button. “I’ll take the stairs.”
After they waved good-bye to Kai, Natalie and Alec got into the elevator. Alone in the quiet space, Natalie felt awkward as she glanced at Alec from the corner of her eye. She had to talk about something. Something that wouldn’t inspire making out or anything.
“So what’s your deal with work?” she asked. “I haven’t seen you go in a while.”
Alec shifted. “Wellllll . . .”
She stared at him. He had to be kidding. Trying to control her tone, she rubbed her face. “Fired. Again?”
“They caught me gnawing on some raw meat in a freezer case,” Alec said with a sheepish nod.
“Ew,” Natalie said with a shudder.
“Moon hunger.” He sighed. “Sorry.”
“Great. How are you supposed to cover rent, then?” Natalie asked.
The doors to the elevator opened and they passed through the bulletproof glass partition and into the foyer. The guard glanced up from his desk as they walked by and then went back to his crossword.
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